You
are a poet and critic, one of the best of your era (the Belle Époch,
ironically). You are held in high public esteem, even though you
possess (and publish) your dangerous opinions via the ‘Mercure de
France’; one of the most important publications (aesthetically) of the
age. Suddenly, your face is horribly disfigured by a disease in just a
few weeks, which even in our own era (the 21’st century) has no known
cure: Lupus Erythematosis v.Discoid. You are forbidden from eating in
your favorite restaurants and cafés because your face (now hideously
deformed) would empty any such establishment in just a few seconds. At
the peak of your creative powers, you are exiled to your apartment in
the Rue de Saints-Péres, where you live solely by your pen, producing
poems, plays and criticism of great beauty, even though, suddenly,
you’ve become the ugliest man in all of Paris.